Wednesday, 24 September 2014

We all know that Louis Van Gaal is a genius who will lead Manchester United towards a new decade of dominance. That's just scientific fact. Whether it be a 3-4-1-2, a 3-5-2 or any number of diamond formations, the Dutchman's tactical influence effects all he encounters. But what are some things that he does not have an influence over?

1. This tugboat

No matter how hard he tries, Louis Van Gaal just can't get this tugboat to adjust to his philosophy at Manchester United. Fun Fact: Tugboats are just normal boats like you or I!

2. Alex Salmond

Alex Salmond's political mindset just can't be changed, even with strict one on one coaching by Van Gaal.

3. The moon

The moon orbits the earth and Louis Van Gaal simply has no way of controlling it's gravitational pull or even appearance. Although it looks the same size as a coin, this is actually because it's very far away. Fun Fact: Richard Branson owns the moon.

Another Fun Fact: the moon is where space jail is.

4. This fox

This fox doesn't take any of Louis Van Gaal's shit and actively ignores tactical advice from him. His influential team talks have absolutely no effect on the Dutchman. Fun Fact: there are foxes that live outside my house and sometimes I chase them.﻿

5. Australian foreign policy

Man United have so many dirty foreigners in their team now that Tony Abbot and all of Australia's foreign policy decisions cannot be influenced one iota by Louis Van Gaal's decisions. Even playing Wayne Rooney in the number 10 role won't change the way they think about ISIS.﻿

7. This girl's sexy skeleton outfit

This girl has made her decision to wear a sexy skeleton costume, and is sticking to it. Van Gaal's comparisons of past teams he led to glory and even his requests for patience from Man United fans won't stop her being hot and wearing a skeleton costume. Jesus christ I want to do terrible things to

8. This other tugboat

This tugboat might even be a toy, we can't be sure, what we can be 100% positive of is that it doesn't matter what Van Gaal says or who he buys, until the tugboat completes its journey from point A to B, we may never be 100% sure of anything again. Especially we may never be sure where speficially the number six role defensive diamond formation Tylor Blackett Falcao F Zero X.

Wednesday, 17 September 2014

Pep Guardiola has been busy assembling a cheat Bayern Munich team by doing what Celtic and Rangers did in the 90s and buying all the best players from their rivals but sees great danger in the way Man United have adopted a new policy of buying players that they need.

The former Barcelona manager said that United's fall from grace following the teleportation of Alex Ferguson to another dimension should be seen as a warning to all other giant clubs. Then he said:

"They don't have enough money, I am sorry,"

This is after someone asked whether Van Gaal tried to sign any Bayern Munich players like Thomas Muller and not why he doesn't wank off tramps in bus shelters anymore. So at no point did he actually say that United were poor like some papers seem to be saying, he was just saying that his players are really good or something like that. To be honest I don't really care, I just thought I should write something about it.

Steven Gerrard scored a last minute penalty winner against a team I have never heard of on Tuesday night and he says that this means that they need to get better.

Faced with the press after the game to analyse just why Liverpool weren't able to win 5-0, because that's what they deserved because they are Liverpool and they just deserve to be in Europe, Gerrard expertly delivered this assessment:

"We did OK but it wasn't better than OK," he said. "There's a lot to learn."

This is the kind of quality insight that England craves. Next week: Micah Richards tells us that Italy is nice, but he'd like to know the language better.

Danny Welbeck successfully completed a move to Arsenal in the transfer window OH MY GOD DID YOU KNOW THIS and he still hasn't scored after two games. That's nearly 90 games.

Yes, good old Danny, deemed largely useless at Manchester United and replaced by players who are genuinely brilliant, has shown in his two Arsenal games that he is worth exactly £16million. He's good enough to run through on goal and chip Joe Hart, but not quite good enough to run through on goal, chip Joe Hart and score. Wenger isn't concerned:

"He had a very lively first half. He had two or three good chances but couldn't finish them. There was one obvious one. We have to be patient with him."

Save it for the judge. Wenger has proven over the years that he has a real eye for spotting genuine quality in players where others don't see it. Bergkamp, Henry, Vieira, Fabregas, Pires, Bendtner, Jeffers... Sanogo... uhhh Andre Santos.... the list goes on.

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

As we all know, Fifa has been utterly pish for at least one year now with FIFA 14 by far and away the most boring version of the game since about Fifa..... 08. Or one of those other middle numbers post Pro Evo 6. We've all been at it - FIFA is an institution now. Most people who like football will equate FIFA with being part of football. But that is not how it should be, friends!

I stopped playing it ages ago and yesterday made a life changing decision, which was to buy Pro Evo 2014 again. DRAMATIC MUSIC

You see, the way it worked was that in the olden days (1994) the only genuine choice of football game we had available was FIFA International Soccer or going outside and playing real football. The decline of the Scottish national football team is possibly linked to the rise of the Megadrive, but FIFA ruled the world. I guess International Superstar Soccer was available too but you didn't play that. Not yet.

And so FIFA became FIFA 95, and then that became FIFA 96 and all we did was play those games because they were fun, even though the only way to score was to run to the corner of the penalty box and shoot, or stand in front of the keeper when he kicks it out. Or this:

But it was a video game that you had to beat, not the user interface in which you competed online against a 9 year old Italian kid who only goes as Real Madrid.

1997's game was in 3D and you could play indoors and score from the halfway line and FIFA 98 had Chumbawumba music on it and was exciting from the time when the demo came out (on a CDROM on the front of a magazine) to the time the game actually game out. Oh what joyous times.

Blah blah blah cuts to FIFA trying to get all serious and realistic. I can't even remember FIFA 99 because those of us who weren't cunts had long since switched over to playing N64 games like Goldeneye, and footballingly, ISS64.

And then ISS98, the second greatest football video game every came out.

And then that became 2000 but without going into it too much, FIFA was abysmally appalling by this point. All they seemed to do or care about on their updates was make the graphics seem a bit nicer without doing anything to actually make the game enjoyable. The early arcadey days of FIFA were dead and because they had lots of sponsors etc they kept trying to make it look nice because PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS AND WILL BUY WHAT THEY ARE TOLD. It worked and FIFA kept outselling Konami's game. I think. I have no facts for that at all, but it feels like that is what would have happened. You could probably bet I'm right though, maybe on some sort of site that tells you what the best betting apps are, like bettingappstore.co.uk.

So anyway, normal people had an N64, not a Playstation, and this is why when Playstation 2 came out and made the Gamecube seem pointless, we all went with that. Don't even get me started on the Dreamcast. It was awful.

In *makes up a year* Pro Evo 4 came out and this is the best football game that ever happened. Ever. It's never been beaten by anything and probably never will.

My University days were spent playing Pro Evo 4 and occasionally not being hungover enough to consider going to Uni, which I would then always decide was pointless and instead chose to play Pro Evo 4, or go to the pub and try and meet girls. Do I lament the death of Pro Evo because I associate with my care-free Uni days and my ability to meet 21 year old girls? Probably yes.

So anyway obviously we've all been playing FIFA since Pro Evo completely Pardewed their online game play mode in about Pro Evo...6 (do you remember the teleporting. I WAS THERE. I WAS THEEEEEERE) and everyone stopped playing it and started playing FIFA, cos they'd hired genuinely good football game making staff and realised that they'd completely lost their audience. They had to work hard and built a new game from scratch that might have been FIFA 09 but I suspect was FIFA 10 on the Playstation 3. Next gen gaming.

Sadly, FIFA 10 and FIFA 11 were the Pro Evo 4 of their resurgence. The series would never be as good as these too again. FIFA 10 changed the game and was really fun, but looked ace, and you could do a Be A Pro and could fanny around in the arena and it was clearly a video game. FIFA 11 improved on it, FIFA 12 was pretty good but then bang. FIFA 13 was the beginning of the end, and there are ISIS beheading videos that I would sooner watch again than play FIFA 14.

In a way I liken it to 'The Hare and the Tortoise', with FIFA being the hare, because hares are dicks.

I've discussed this much before but friends, yesterday I went to a video game shop in a "mawl" and purchased for £15, the Pro Evolution Soccer game 2014. It's fucking brilliant.

Why is it so good?

Reason 1: unlike FIFA 14, it doesn't feel like you're fighting the game constantly. When you play FIFA it's a battle not only to beat your opponent but to also avoid boredom, the computer passing to the wrong person, a random corner headed goal, and just other assorted bullshit that makes it lame. I played Pro Evo for 4 hours in a row without being bored on Monday night. I can't manage 2 games of FIFA in a row without drinking beer at the same time to numb my brain.

Reason 2: You can play tournaments and leagues without it being some hugely complicated championship manager rip off. Did you notice that in FIFA? You can't play a fucking tournament without buying it. The game costs like £50 and you have to buy a secret feature like a tournament. It makes me physically angry.

Reason 3: EA Sports know they've won the battle and don't give a shit now. New features include: Better goalkeepers? :-/ great if there's one thing I love it's an impossible 'Robot that kills people in the opening scene of Robocop' goalkeeper. Or how about 'sexier faces?' or 'more stadiums'? It's like going to the Natural History Museum to look at the T Rex to be told that they've gotten rid of it and instead there's a new interactive animatronic Allosaurus (they look the same, right? but they're cheaper, yeh?) that you can take a selfie with and it's sponsored by Coca Cola. And also the Allosaurus is racist and constantly posts Facebook updates about Independence with lots of exclamation marks, having not read the content in the actual article about which they are so outraged.

Reason 4: The commentary on Pro Evo is appalling and that makes it amazing. It's so much more fun when the commentary makes no sense. Oh and on a serious note the player likeness is great too. Load times are dreadful but it looks nice.

Reason 5: You don't need any other reasons. It's just fun.

So, in conclusion. If you want to be a massive jerk, buy the new FIFA and keep playing it. Keep spending your money on Ultimate Team, and indirectly - through mass peer pressure - force little kids to use their pocket money to buy little virtual stickers of players that should be completely free instead of on other games, or things that involve going outside. It's an absolute travesty that EA Sports charge so much for one packet of virtual things. It's an exact replica of what's wrong with modern football - those who can afford to waste money on loads of stickers will do it, because they can, and those who desperately just want to have that player they really want but can't afford it are forced to give handjobs to truckers on the layby near my house I mean get a job and earn money.

Fuck off EA Sports.

I'm going back to the days of University when things were fun. Join me! I also bought a Wii U. Let's play MARIO KART TOGETHER! YAEEEEEHHHHH!!!! AM I HAVING ANOTHER LIFE CRISIS? QUITE POSSIBLY! HOORRAAAAAYYYYYY

Monday, 1 September 2014

Transfer Deadline Day happened and blah blah blah you know how it goes. Some journalists who really want to be news anchors get stuck having to hang out with a bunch of YOOFS and children whose parents don't know where they are and some oil barons fund hundreds of millions of unnecessary transfers. Transfer Deadline Day! But the real winner was the internet.

A dildo. In the ear. This is modern society, people. We're here.

The day was actually relatively calm but as soon as night fell things started to go a bit weird. These horrible minks did this:

huh huh huh great banter lads! Lads eh? LADS!

But that was just the beginning. You may not be aware of the Fuck Her Right In The Pussy viral trend, started by a Fox News presenter being caught unawares and then recreated by some weird old guy in a hoody and glasses:

It was done again and again in America and Australia on countless live news reports and Sky presenters and basically it became a thing. Everyone, including Sky Sports producers were almost certainly aware of what was going to happen on Transfer Deadline Day.

For those who aren't sure how TV works, Deadline Day reporting crews are just a camera man, a presenter, a producer and maybe a runner. Somewhere quite far away in the background there's a truck that broadcasts the feed, but when I went and did it with a certain sports TV channel... let's call them BP Sport... that's all there is. There is no way to prevent stuff like this:

The reporters were all very well prepped, Jim White and co were similarly ready to issue statements to prevent Ofcom shutting down Transfer Deadline Day in the future but the worst thing was how sad Natalie Sawyer looked. I don't have a picture or anything, just trust me.

Poor Natalie :-(

In other news Arsenal are about to sign Danny 'I genuinely can't tell if you are useless or not' Welbeck, Man Utd are about to sign Radamel Falcao even though his knee is destroyed and he doesn't play in defence and Hatem Ben Arfa, one of the most coveted top prospects of French football about six years ago is on his way to Hull. Have you ever been to Hull? What am I saying, you have the internet! Of course you haven't.